I had so many more questions I wanted to talk about during my recent State of the Union of Data Modeling 2016, but one hour goes by quickly when you have tools, industry, professionals, standards and user groups to cover. I’m interested in your observations and comments about these questions:

Has data modeling accomplished all it needs to? Are we just in the maintenance phase of data modeling as a practice and profession?

Data Modeling tools have so much maturity of features in them today. But along with that prices have reflected those changes. How have the prices of enterprise data modeling tools impacted data modeling on enterprise projects?

Have you worked with any non-IDEF1x/IE data modeling notation recently?

Have you worked with any open source data modeling tools?

What new features/enhancements/changes would you like to see in data modeling tools? Processes? Notations?

Why haven’t we solved the “no one loves me or my models” problem more widely?

I’ll add my thoughts on these in the comments, but I’d like to hear your responses as well.

My friend Joey D’Antoni ( @jdanton | blog ) and I will be giving a workshop at NoSQLNow! about new database and datastore technologies like Hadoop, Neo4j, Cassandra, Vertica, Document DB, and others. This will be a fast-paced, demo-heavy, practical sessions for data professionals. We’ll talk about where a modern data architecture would best use these technologies and why it’s not an either/or question for relational solutions in a successful enterprise. And, as always, our goal is to make the time we spend fun and interactive. This session will be a great starting point for some other session on Monday that go into data modeling for NoSQL as well as for all the other in-depth, database-specific talks the rest of the week.

Sunday, April 17, 2016
Level:Intermediate

We’ve been busy keeping relational data consistent, high quality, and available. But over the last few years, new database and datastore technologies have come to the enterprise with different data stories. Do we need all our data to be consistent everywhere? What does data quality mean for analytics? Will we need relational database?

Learn how traditional and new database technologies fit in a modern data architecture. We will talk about the underlying concepts and terminology such as CAP, ACID and BASE and how they form the basis of evaluating each of the categories of databases. Learn about graph, Hadoop, relational, key value, document, columnar, and column family databases and how and when they should be considered. We’ll show you demos of each.

Finally, we will wrap up with 7+ tips for working with new hybrid data architectures: tools, techniques and standards.

Last year I participated in the first Data Field Day in San Jose. I’m honoured to be a delegate for the tenth Tech Field Day which follows the same format. On 3-5 February I’ll be in Austin, Texas visiting with vendors in the software, hardware and virtualization world. There will be twelve of us participating, along with our fearless host, Stephen Foskett ( @SFoskett ).

We will be visiting these vendors during TFD10:

At each vendor visit there will be livestreaming during their presentation and we will discuss their products and services, ask questions. You can follow that stream above. Delegates are known for their brutal honesty, their insight and even some fun observations.

You can also follow along on Twitter hashtag of #TFD10. You can also post your own questions for these session using that hashtag.

What I love about field days is the the mix of delegates with a wide background in business, tech, innovation, entrepreneurship and data. This breadth means that we, as a team, look at the technology and business with a variety of viewpoints. And you get to watch it all live.

BTW, the next Data Field Day is scheduled for 8-10 June. If you have products or services you’d like to present to a team of independent data experts, contact me.

I hope you can follow along. It’s a great chance to see real world tech innovation discussions.

It’s a new year and I’ve given Thomas LaRock (@@sqlrockstar | blog ) a few months to recover and ramp up his training since our last Throwdown. The trophies from all my wins are really cluttering my office and I feel back that Tom has not yet had a chance to claim victory. So we will battling again in just a few days.

I’ll be dishing out the knowledge along with a handkerchief for Tom to wipe up his tears at SQL Saturday #461 Austin, TX on 30 January 2016. This full day community-driven event features real database professionals giving free presentations on SQL Server and Data Platform topics. All you need to do is register (again, it’s free) before all the tickets are gone.

Everyone agrees that great database performance starts with a great database design. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees which design options are best. Data architects and DBAs have debated database design best practices for decades. Systems built to handle current workloads are unable to maintain performance as workloads increase.Attend this new and improved session and join the debate about the pros and cons of database design decisions. This debate includes topics such as logical design, data types, primary keys, indexes, refactoring, code-first generators, and even the cloud. Learn about the contentious issues that most affect your end users and how to avoid them.

One of the other great benefits of attending these events is that you get to network with other data professionals who are working on project just like yours…or ones you will likely work on at some point.

Join us an other data pros to talk about data, databases and projects. And make sure you give a #datahug to Tom after the Throwdown. He’s gonna need it.

On 2 February I’ll be speaking at TECHUnplugged Austin, Texas. This event, which has free registration, focuses on how technology innovation is changing business and IT.

TECHunplugged is a full day conference focused on cloud computing and IT infrastructure.

Its innovative formula combines three essential parts of the industry for an exceptional exchange of information, insights and education:

– A group of independent, insightful and well-recognized influencers
– Leading disruptive technology vendors,
– End users who manage rich technology environments.

The ultimate goal of TECHUnplugged Conference is to bring quality information to IT decision makers by bringing them together with independent influencers and industry vendors, to engage, debate and be informed through open discussions on topics such as IT infrastructure, virtualization, cloud computing and storage.

I’m going to be talking about how data has changed over the years and how data quality issues can become obstacles to business innovation.

If you are in IT and would like to attend, use the registration form below. If you use my special code, you’ll be entered to win a special prize of an Amazon Echo (I SO LOVE MINE!) at the event.

I recently wrote a whitepaper, sponsored by Neo4j, on how your master data (think cross-application data like CUSTOMER, PRODUCT, ORGANIZATION, etc.) is much more valuable to your organization if you can leverage the relationships between the data. You might think that relational databases are all about relationships, but they aren’t. The relational in relational database comes from the fact that data is a relation (a table-like structure of columns and rows).

The best thing we have for describing relationships in a relational database is a foreign key (FK). An FK is a constraint between two tables. In a relational database, FKs enforce integrity between exactly two tables. But in the real world, relationships are more than constraints. They are implied, inferred and, maybe even just plausible. That’s not a constraint; that’s a relationship. And these relationships often exist because they span multiple tables. Think about CUSTOMERs that are related because they live at ADDRESSes near each other, they have TRANSACTIONs at the same RETAIL STORE and they buy the same PRODUCTs and SERVICEs. That’s a specific relationship, one that has nothing to do with foreign keys.

How to choose the right technology for the stories your data wants to tell, so your business can use data in ways it couldn’t do before

Why relationships are just as important as the things they relate

What foreign keys really do to your architecture

How companies like Cisco and Polyvore use graphs to get real business value from Master Data

Karen Lopez, Data Evangelist, InfoAdvisors

Karen Lopez has more than 20 years of data architecture and database design experience. She specializes in the practical application of design approaches, balancing development time frames with the need to deliver solutions that will support business agility and data quality needs. Known for her practical and sometimes snarky views on the data world, Karen works to find the right tools for the job, even if it means learning something new. She wants you to love your data.

Kami Nixon, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Neo Technology

A recipient of the 2012 “Graphie”, Kamille was a fan of Neo4j for several years before she happily joined the team. Kamille has helped several successful database companies (DataStax, Comindware and Embarcadero Technologies) to identify and execute on market trends so they could pull ahead of the pack. Her efforts have led to doubled vertical bookings, increases by 30% to 100% in year-over-year revenue, and several awards. In addition to the Graphie, Kamille has received several other commendations, including co-authoring with Karen Lopez story #5 in Information Management’s Top 10 for 2011, and Best Investigative Journalism in a national competition.

Lara Rubbelke (@sqlgal ) and I recently presented 7 Databases in 70 Minutes, a sort of homage to the book 7 Databases in 7 Weeks. The event was SQLBits, a UK-based SQL Server event. We first gave this talk at the PASS Summit last year.

We don’t talk about the same databases as the book, but the concepts are the same. We cover relational, column family, graph, key value, Hadoop, and document database technologies, focusing mostly on the reasons why you would want to consider these and what a typical create and query statement might look like.

And then we end with 7 reasons why you should start exploring them.

It’s a blast talking about so many things in such a short time frame and it’s fun watching light bulbs go off as people realize these aren’t just silly open source projects, but real, enterprise class solutions for common enterprise processes.